Archive | Center for Media Law and Policy

Content related to the Center for Media Law and Policy’s activities and people.

Center Staffer’s Book on Shield Laws Published

By on June 24, 2013 in Center for Media Law and Policy, Journalism

shield-lawsUNC Center for Media Law and Policy Research Fellow Dean Smith is the author of a new book, “A Theory of Shield Laws: Journalists, Their Sources, and Popular Constitutionalism,” published in June by LFB Scholarly Publishing.

In his book, Smith shows how the debate over confidential sources evolved over the 115-year history of statutory shield laws, and he examines how First Amendment values drove the debate in both the courts and in legislative bodies.  He corrects some long-standing errors in the historical record.

The book also is a textual analysis of enacted and proposed shield laws and cases that tracks the evolution in thinking on the journalist-privilege issue. Finally, it is a reappraisal of Branzburg v. Hayes that suggests a fresh way of seeing that familiar Supreme Court case: as neither a beginning nor an end, but as a midway point in a conversation the courts are having with the American people.

His use of the emerging concept of popular constitutionalism as a theoretical framework led Smith to new and important insights about this area of law, including the fact that legislative and judicial decision-making were intimately intertwined. Drawing on contemporary legal scholarship, Smith used the reporter’s privilege issue to test constitutional-law scholar Michael Gerhardt’s theory of “non-judicial precedents,” and he has shown how, true to the theory, people acting outside the courts help give meaning to constitutional principles such as freedom of the press over time.

Smith earned his Ph.D. from the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication in 2012.  He has presented award-winning papers at academic conferences and published in scholarly journals.  Smith also has written two white papers for the media law center.  The first paper summarized the findings of a center-sponsored conference on how to meet the information needs of communities. The second report described the benefits of state public affairs networks (SPAN systems) that cover state government.

Smith spent the past academic year teaching media law and newswriting at N.C. State University and High Point University. This fall he will begin work as an assistant professor at High Point University.

Before coming to UNC, Smith worked for The Charlotte Observer (1990-2004) and The (Raleigh) News & Observer (2004-2006) as a copy editor, reporter, and editor.

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Center Staffers Honored

By on April 23, 2013 in Center for Media Law and Policy

Three students who work in the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy were honored at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication’s annual awards ceremony on April 22, 2013.

Liz Woolery, a second-year Ph.D. student, won the John B. Adams Award for Excellence in Mass Communication Law.  Liz plans events and does communications work for the center

John Remensperger was honored as the year’s outstanding master’s graduate.  He designed and maintains the center’s website.

Julia Wall received the Stuart Sechriest Award, which is given to the top undergraduate photojournalism student.  She was the center’s photographer this semester.

Congratulations to our wonderful students!

 

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Final Interdisciplinary Lunch of the Year

By on April 9, 2013 in Center for Media Law and Policy, Privacy

This Friday the Center will hold its final interdisciplinary lunch of the year from noon to 1:15 p.m. in the Halls of Fame Room in Carroll Hall. The topic for this lunch is “Privacy by Design.” More information on the lunch (and how to RSVP) is available here.

If you haven’t attended one of our lunches yet, here’s what you’re missing:

The chance to meet new people
The lunches are open to Carolina graduate students and faculty. And the lunches truly are interdisciplinary. We have had students, faculty, and staff from the School of Information and Library Science, School of Law, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Department of Computer Science, Health Sciences, Office of Human Research Ethics, University Libraries, and more. If you’re looking for opportunities to collaborate across disciplines, there could not be a better place to start than with a conversation over lunch.

Exposure to new topics and new ideas
Between the suggested readings and the conversation at the lunch, attendees are guaranteed exposure to research topics and ideas they hadn’t previously considered. Though the topic for each lunch is set in advance, the conversation is only loosely structured, which means that each lunch can cover a lot of scholarly ground. At each lunch we address a different topic; over the course of a year we tackle between four and six media law and policy-related issues.

Great conversation
By the time Friday rolls around, maybe you’re feeling a little burned out and you’re looking forward to the weekend. What better way to slip into the weekend than with some great scholarly conversation? Given the interdisciplinary nature of these lunches, everyone comes at these topics from a different perspective, which makes for a fun discussion.

Input on future lunches and topics
One of the best parts of bringing together people from across the University is that everyone brings something different to the table. And when it comes to thinking about topics for future lunches, that means that you can suggest an interesting topic for our next lunch! Do you have an idea for a future topic? We are all ears.

And last, but certainly not least: Good food!
If you show up, we are happy to feed you – usually sandwiches or wraps from some of the great restaurants in Chapel Hill. Free food and interesting discussion. What could be better?

Here’s a list of topics we’ve been talking about at these lunches over the past two years:

  • Privacy and Human Subject Research
  • Wikipedia as an Example of The Promises and Pitfalls of Peer-Produced Media
  • Who Owns Research Data?
  • Studying Social Media
  • Social Networks, Privacy, and Politics
  • The Right to Be Forgotten

What are you waiting for? RSVP for Friday’s lunch by 5 p.m. Wednesday, April 10. More information on the lunch (and how to RSVP) is available here.

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Congratulations, Carter McCall!

By on December 22, 2012 in Center for Media Law and Policy

Carter McCall, the staff photographer for the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy for the past semester, graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill last Sunday.  Congratulations, Carter!

While he was a student, Carter received the 2012 National Press Photographers Foundation Reid Blackburn Scholarship.  Now Carter, who is from Goldsboro, N.C., is on his way to a visual journalism internship at the Bangor (Maine) Daily News.  He’ll be shooting both photos and video.

While he worked for the media law center, Carter photographed a variety of events, including First Amendment Day, the two-day Hazelwood symposium, and our interdisciplinary lunches.  You can see his photos on the center’s Flikr account.

Good luck, Carter, and don’t forget to pack your mittens!  We’ll miss you.

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Welcome to the Center’s New Website

By on October 26, 2012 in Center for Media Law and Policy

I know I’m stating the obvious, but we changed our website.  The old website, which worked well for our first few years, just wasn’t able to keep up with all of the exciting things the center has been doing.  With the help of our fantastic new web guru, John Remensperger, a second-year Master’s student and Roy H. Park Fellow in the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication, we’ve been able to add a ton of new functionality to the site.

For example, have you seen the new events page, which lists our events and media law and policy conferences all around the world? Or the new section we created exclusively for students?  We are especially excited about the student pages because we want both current and prospective students to know about all of the great opportunities for studying — and gaining practical experience in — media law and policy at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill.

The idea behind these changes is to make this site more dynamic and useful.  To make it easy for you to keep track of what we are doing and to get involved.  We also want to make this a place where you can come to find the latest news and information about media law and policy. To make that happen, we’ve started pulling together information and resources about media law and policy from across the Internet.  Check out our new resources page, which includes media law primers and aggregates tweets on media law and intellectual property law.

But we aren’t done yet.  Over the next few weeks we plan to add a job posting page that will list academic and professional job openings available in the areas of media law and media policy (and will be easily searchable).  If you have an employment opportunity you would like us to include in our database, please contact us.  And we are ramping up our blog, with content from UNC faculty, law students, and graduate students.

All of which is to say that the site is still a work in progress, so don’t be alarmed if you come back tomorrow and it looks a little different.  As we add new content and tweak things, we want YOUR INPUT.  Please let us know what you think, either in the comments below or via email.

(Image courtesy of Flickr user Robert Hruzek pursuant to Creative Commons CC BY-NC 2.0 license.)

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